Video losses in former TWC areas offset by Internet subscriber gains.

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Charter Communications lost 105,000 TV subscribers in former Time Warner Cable territory in Q4 2016, the second straight quarter of video customer losses since acquiring TWC.

The loss of 105,000 video subscribers in TWC territory is in sharp contrast to TWC's premerger performance in Q4 2015, when it gained 54,000 video subscribers, according to Charter's earnings report released yesterday. Charter gained 20,000 video subscribers in its premerger territory in Q4 2016 and gained another 34,000 video subscribers in the former territory of Bright House Networks, which it also acquired last year. That left Charter with a quarterly loss of 51,000 video subscribers, while a year ago the three premerger companies gained a total of 118,000 in the same period.

While Charter added Internet subscribers in former TWC territory, the company said the video losses and an overall decline in customer growth "was primarily driven by elevated churn on historical products in legacy TWC markets." Charter has been pushing out new pricing and packages to the acquired territories, and former TWC customers have reportedly seen big bill increases when their promotional prices expire.

Three months ago, Charter reported similar video subscriber losses for Q3 2016 and blamed them on "legacy pricing and packaging issues," saying that TWC customers were "mispriced." That seemed to indicate that price increases drove the video subscriber losses in the third quarter. Yesterday, Charter said the rollout of new pricing and packages to legacy TWC markets will be "largely complete" by the end of March. Cable TV prices have continued to rise industry-wide, driven in large part by programming costs.

Charter finalized its acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in May 2016 and nearly quadrupled in size in the process. The company now has 24.8 million residential customers.

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The Internet portion of the business is growing in both the premerger Charter territory and the territories of the companies it acquired, with a total Q4 2016 gain of 357,000 residential Internet customers. Still, that was down from a gain of 495,000 in the same period in 2015. There were small gains in voice subscribers and overall an increase of 345,000 residential subscribers, down from an increase of 917,000 in Q4 2015.

Charter revenue was $10.3 billion in Q4 2016, up 7.2 percent year-over-year compared to the combined premerger territories. Net income was $454 million in the fourth quarter, up from $130 million in the previous year's fourth quarter. Charter's residential revenue grew 6 percent year-over-year, helped by increases in Internet subscribers and increases in per-customer revenue, and its commercial revenue grew 11.8 percent.

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.